f you’ve ever asked me ‘how do I know when my dough is fully proved?’ this is for you….
If you know anything about me and my sourdough world, you will know that keeping things simple is my main driving force; sourdough can be made as simply as you choose to make it, and I work very hard to make it as simple as possible for me, and for anyone who uses my ways…
Once question I am asked a lot is ‘how do I know when my dough is fully proved?’.
The simple answer is: look for it to double in size. But I know that that’s not always as easy as it sounds.
So, the even SIMPLER answer is this: do what I do, and use a perfect sized bowl to help you judge it!
Yes. Use whatever tools you can to make life easy, and a perfectly sized bowl takes the guess work out of judging the growth of your dough completely. And that’s what these bowls do.
Let me explain….this didn’t happen by design, I just ordered some new bowls one day and along came this one. The more I used it, the more I realised how useful it was. It is PERFECT for making my master recipe, in more ways than one. When I make my standard full size dough, I look for my dough to almost fill the bowl (obviously I also want it to be sufficiently structured and well proved too); when I make my baby master doughs, I want the dough to be level with the second groove engraved in the side of the bowl. If the dough under or over proves the bowl also helps to judge that.
As I say, this has been a happy accident, I didn’t choose the bowls for this reason, but it has all fallen into place. I now own 12 of these bowls, they stack perfectly, and I use them all over and over again. You don’t need as many as me, I have so many for my courses, but I highly recommend you give them a go. Again, this is the kind of helpful, simple Foodbod advice, you will find in my book, The Sourdough Whisperer.
You can now find these exact bowls in the US here: Shana’s Sourdough
Simplicity, all the way.